SparkleShare – open source Dropbox clone on the way?

SparkleShare is a new open source project to provide an alternative to the cool DropBox file sharing and synchronisation service. When I say new, I mean there’s no serious code to speak of yet, just lots of enthusiasm. And bugs.

Nevertheless this is an excellent project and one that deserves support. DropBox is fabulous, but we do need an open alternative to provide choice. In case you don’t know about DropBox yet, it’s a superb way to share, backup, and synchronise your files across multiple computers. There’s a free version which gives up to 2GB of space, and it Just Works.

So SparkleShare aims to replace Dropbox for us. There are some resemblances and some differences. SparkleShare creates a SparkleShare folder in your home directory in which you can add different remote folders (these can be on different servers). It has the same DropBox like notification system, one feature that we really liked. It allows you to see what others are doing and take peek, much easier than sending around e-mails, forget attachments and add wrong CCs. The most important thing is that the synchronisation is automatic and happens when you add or edit files.